Stop Trying

The following is from Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What. I suggest that if you haven't gotten this book, to not even finish this sentence, but to see about getting it know. It's that good.

And that is the thing about life. You go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but the whole time there is this deeper language people are really talking, and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fashion, or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable. What if the economy we are really dealing in life, what if the language we are really speaking in life, what if what we really want in life is relational?

Now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition,it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we all are speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind.

I urge you to seek His company rather than being motivated by avoiding His condemnation. Naughty and nice are irrelevant when you long for His embrace & sit in His lap. The god of your dreams doesn't hold a candle to the God of our reality. Embrace Him. Know Him. You'll never be good enough. Stop trying.